This is for those of us who have ever walked into a space just like that one, and felt safe, for the first time, to be who we really were. A space where we didn’t have to worry about who we looked at, or smiled at. A space where we were beautiful, and free, and yes, proud of who we were and the road we had walked to get there.

Because rumours are rising that this sick and damaged man, this wielder of terror and horror, this gun man – that he was known to the patrons and staff of the Pulse nightclub. That he beat his wife and got blind drunk at gay clubs and became homicidally enraged at watching two men kiss in public. That his father is very keen to tell us he wasn’t a practicing Muslim, but equally keen to tell us his son wasn’t gay.

This is about us.

Because we’ve met that kind of hatred, too. Not knowing if you’re going home with a lover who will beat you after. Drowning your self-hatred in drink. The epidemic levels of internalised and externalised queer-on-queer violence that we can’t even discuss for fear of the ammunition that will hand to our oppressors.

And as a result the borders we draw so tight around ourselves that we leave half of our community shivering on the street. Including me.

And this still isn’t about me.

But I know that between the struggle to live queer in this world and the struggle to be seen and accepted as a not-quite-gay-enough woman in the scene; between the fear of violence and rejection and the warm, loving man in my bed, I know it has been 17 years since I last entered a gay club.

Nearly 20 years, brothers and sisters, since my last Pride.

And I am not the only one. So I’ve spent two days now scrambling and rearranging and apologising and organising to get to an event I walked away from, heartbroken, feeling like I didn’t belong, and wasn’t represented, and wasn’t spoken for.

To stand side by side with disabled friends and sick friends and trans and non-binary friends and yes, queer people of colour.

Because it takes something like this to remember that terror has never been able to force us into the shadows. Not with Stonewall, not with the Admiral Duncan, and not now. Not ever.